It was on my second day of my second visit to Portland, lying bed at the Hotel Monaco when it dawned on me that this city’s beer culture is less about the actual beer and far more about the city’s confidence in itself.
Listen: Portland’s beer culture, like any beer culture, is an indication of the health of the soul of the city.
I was there on a reconnaissance trip, of sorts, for a new craft beer publication I’m launching in January, and had spent the entire day previous touring the city’s bars and breweries east of the river. Every single one had its own character and flavour. Public art adorns the most random of places – mailboxes, street corners, gas station walls.
And everywhere we went, we met a multitude of exceedingly friendly people – most of them local who’d moved there from all over the US – happy to offer directions, or simply chat about the city they were clearly in love with.
That’s not to say everyone we met was a beacon of civilian servitude. The bouncer outside APEX taproom refused us entry because we didn’t have our passports on us and she was a real jerk about it. But over all, I sensed a connectivity and camaraderie among the locals that simply doesn’t exist in my own city, and I’d argue is the most glaring difference between these two otherwise very similar cities.
Travel Portland’s latest campaign boasts Portland is happening now, and it’s very clear that the people living there are aware they’re experiencing some kind of Golden Age for the city.
And it’s positively soaking in beer – 60 craft breweries within the city limits (compared to Vancouver’s 18). I wonder if Portland like this because of the beer influence? Or, has Portland’s beer culture thrived because it’s the perfect fit for a culture that is and always has been inclusive and experimental?
It’s probably some fusion of the two. Beer culture is inclusive by nature, as I’ve written before, and in Vancouver it seems to be encouraging growth in that particular department. The growth in “neighbourhood” craft breweries would, you’d think, help foster new connections and more opportunity for inclusivity. Places like Portland’s Burnside or Coalition Brewing (or Brassneck in Vancouver, or Steel and Oak in New Westminster) function like neighbourhood pubs that attract like-minded people who are drawn not just to the beer, but to the creative and artisanal aspects behind the beer.
Of course, a city or community would have to want that to happen in order for it to take root, but I think a city that embraces connectivity, creativity and experimentation, and has developed an identity and economy around that, is, to me, a healthy city.
So, it’s easy for myself and other like-minded Vancouverites to fawn over Portland because Portland’s what Vancouver might be like if Vancouver knew what kind of city it was or wanted to be. Vancouver is not a city comfortable with its identity. It’s not a city with a discernable identity of any kind. You want some insight into the psychology of any given city? Look at the local travel organization’s website and advertising campaigns.
Look at Vancouver’s. We have no unifying narrative, no story to tell and nothing all that radical about Vancouver beyond its natural beauty, low crime rate and liberal attitude. But it's mostly about the t’n’a.
Because, if Vancouver were human, she’d be the beautiful and soft-spoken 20-something who found international fame and success as a teen (see: the Olympics) and has spent her late adolescence and early adulthood with an identity crisis figuring out who she is, and who she wants to be, under crippling pressure from outside influences.
Portland, on the other hand, has grown up depressed and isolated (and maybe drug-addicted) in the shadow of her considerably more successful siblings (Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles). But she was left to her own devices and has grown into her own, on her own. It’s a very American city, and seems to be harbouring some secret for keeping the American Dream alive. It’s not perfect – homelessness is severe, and the unemployment rate as of October is 6.1 per cent – but something’s working.
Portland’s been allowed to grow up cool. Vancouver, who’s played Canada’s Seattle, LA, and San Francisco at the same time, has been shaped and manipulated into a becoming something it hasn’t seemed altogether comfortable with. Its growth hasn’t been driven with much respect to community spirit – and then visitors complain that Vancouverites are unfriendly.
But this is changing and I do believe that the craft beer culture is both the harbinger and the catalyst. Portland, waiving that hipster-ized freak flag of hers, is the global example of what we’d like to become, and a version of what we could become if we (or she) can get our shit sorted out.
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